MySQL date formats - difficulty Inserting a date

I am trying to further a question I asked yesterday where I wanted to know how to query a date in a different format. But now I am trying to do an insert using this method (see below) however I can't get it to work. I have checked the manual but it is not beginner friendly!

INSERT INTO custorder VALUES ('Kevin','yes'), STR_TO_DATE('1-01-2012', '%d-%m-%Y');

Put the date in single quotes and move the parenthesis (after the 'yes') to the end:

INSERT INTO custorder 
  VALUES ('Kevin', 'yes' , STR_TO_DATE('1-01-2012', '%d-%m-%Y') ) ;
                        ^                                     ^
---parenthesis removed--|                and added here ------|

---

But you can always use dates without STR_TO_DATE() function, just use the (Y-m-d) '20120101' or '2012-01-01' format. Check the MySQL docs: Date and Time Literals

INSERT INTO custorder 
  VALUES ('Kevin', 'yes', '2012-01-01') ;

Looks like you've not encapsulated your string properly. Try this:

INSERT INTO custorder VALUES ('Kevin','yes'), STR_TO_DATE('1-01-2012', '%d-%m-%Y');

Alternatively, you can do the following but it is not recommended. Make sure that you use STR_TO-DATE it is because when you are developing web applications you have to explicitly convert String to Date which is annoying. Use first One.

INSERT INTO custorder VALUES ('Kevin','yes'), '2012-01-01';

I'm not confident that the above SQL is valid, however, and you may want to move the date part into the brackets. If you can provide the exact error you're getting, I might be able to more directly help with the issue.

The date format for mysql insert query is YYYY-MM-DD

example:

INSERT INTO table_name (date_column) VALUE ('YYYY-MM-DD');

An add-on to the previous answers since I came across this concern:

If you really want to insert something like 24-May-2005 to your DATE column, you could do something like this:

INSERT INTO someTable(Empid,Date_Joined)
VALUES
    ('S710',STR_TO_DATE('24-May-2005', '%d-%M-%Y'));

In the above query please note that if it's May(ie: the month in letters) the format should be %M.

NOTE: I tried this with the latest MySQL version 8.0 and it works!

When using a string-typed variable in PHP containing a date, the variable must be enclosed in single quotes:

$NEW_DATE = '1997-07-15';
$sql = "INSERT INTO tbl (NEW_DATE, ...) VALUES ('$NEW_DATE', ...)";